Shadowmaster Illrigger: D&D 5e Subclass Optimisation Guide

Strike from the shadows with this assassin subclass for the illrigger.

The shadowmaster is one of the subclasses of MCDM’s illrigger class. They are the spies and assassins of Hell, serving Belial as his network of information, manipulation and murder. Shadowmasters act discreetly, operating with a network of spies who often don’t even know whom they truly serve.

Shadowmasters are deeply committed to keeping the secrets of their order. They are oathbound to kill themselves should their knowledge or nature be at risk of being revealed.

If you want to play an illrigger that’s big on dealing damage and stealth, then this is likely a good option for you.

In this article, I’ve looked at how you can optimise your own shadowmaster as well as assessing just how good I think they are and the tactics you can use with them. Just remember, the illrigger and its subclasses are 3rd party content (created by MCDM) so check with your DM before you use them. If you want to play an illrigger, they’re available available on D&D Beyond or as a PDF.

At a glance

Frontline warriors with enhanced attacks
Make solid party faces
Stealth and spy specialists
Also excel at dealing high damage attacks

4/5 – Shadowmasters are a bit uneven when it comes to features. They start out weaker than other illrigger’s, but do catch up. They make great damage dealers and stealth specialists. They do have a slightly broken feature at level 15 which I’d encourage DMs to tone down a little, but otherwise, this is a solid subclass that fulfills the role of a martial rogue well.

Shadowmaster features

Marked for death (Lv 3) – 3/5

Advantage on your first attack against interdicted creatures is a solid accuracy buff. It does mean keeping enemies interdicted though rather than burning seals which can limit your options a bit.

Strike from the dark (Lv3) – 4/5

A weaker sneak attack. The extra damage is d4s and the number of dice is smaller, but illrigger’s get other benefits like seals and extra attack. It’s also an extra 5-15 damage on average per turn, which is solid.

The bonus damage from darkness is pretty small. The requirement to have advantage isn’t too tricky though with marked for death, you just need to make those interdictions happen.

Technically, you can land this with a reaction attack too, but having advantage on a reaction attack is very challenging and situational.

Invoke hell (Lv3) – 3/5

Disguise self is a decent spell and good for a stealth subclass that wants to engage in subterfuge. However, other illlriggers get invoke hell effects that have the potency of level 3 spells, making this feel weak in comparison.

No escape is OK if you really want to keep an enemy within reach. You’ll want to use this against the kinds of creatures that might try to run away (ranged creatures or spellcasters).

These are perhaps the weakest invoke hell options I’ve seen on any of the illrigger subclasses. They’re only alright, but nothing impressive.

Belial’s interdiction (Lv7) – 5/5

Invisibility is pretty great and good for surprise attacks and stealth. It only requires a bonus action to activate so can be quite easily used in combat quite effectively while still having your action free for attacks. You could even do something quite cunning like become invisible at the end of your turn giving you a turn of relative safety. If a creature moves away from you, you may get an attack of opportunity, and because you’d have advantage on this attack from being invisible, you’ll get the extra damage from strike from the dark a 2nd time in the round.

Hell’s assassin is not only great for standard damage, but your strike from the dark gets better damage as a result as it’s weapon attack damage and 1s and 2s are likely with a bunch of D4s.

Dark malediction will give you darkness around interdicted enemies. This allows your attacks to do more damage due to your enhancements from striking in darkness. Fortunately, you gain darkvision at level 11. It also gives disadvantage on attack rolls to the affected creature due to the darkness (unless they have darkvision).

Umbral killer (Lv11) – 5/5

Lota of great effects here like darkvision, an extra 10ft speed, advantage on hiding checks and reduced damage from dexterity saving throws. There’s a lot of useful stuff here!

Doomed to the shadows (Lv15) – 5/5

Much improved damage from strike from the dark. Blinding a creature at the cost of a seal is strong. This is automatic and lasts for a minute with no way to end it making this extremely potent. It means that even BBEGs can’t prevent this with legendary resistance. I’d make this one of the primary uses of your seals other than making sure at least one target is interdicted for your advantage and extra damage. In fact, I’d argue this is too powerful and should be nerfed a bit.

How good is the shadowmaster subclass?

Shadowmasters are a little uneven. They perform worse than the other illrigger subclasses at lower levels, but when they hit level 7+, they start to get some very interesting and useful features. Some of this does kick in too slowly though.

As a bit of a rogue/warrior combination though, they are decent at all levels. If you can get to level 15 though, the blinding aspect of that feature is a little broken in my opinion. I’d suggest that DMs make this a little weaker. It should either work automatically but have saving throws on subsequent turns, require an initial saving throw but no subsequent saving throws or require an initial saving throw and ongoing saving throws, but allow some damage at the same time.

While the balance of the subclass is a bit wonky, it does seem to work out as a good subclass overall. Just be aware of being less effective at lower levels and a rule adjustment.

4/5

Building a shadowmaster illrigger

Shadowmasters are built to be stealthy, fulfilling the role of a rogue to a large extent, both in and out of combat. If you need to fully replace a rogue, you may need a bit of help from your race and background, like grabbing sleight of hand and Thieves’ tools proficiency. Otherwise, your build should be similar to most illriggers.

Ability scores

Recommended options

Dexterity: A dexterity build is much better for a shadowmaster than a strength build. You’ll want to be doing things like hiding and sneaking around. Most illriggers do better with a dexterity build anyway as it saves you from investing in strength and dexterity.
Constitution: Most shadowmasters will want to be in the middle of the melee, which means having more resilience through constitution.
Charisma: This affects your DC for things like interdict boons as well as your face skill capabilities. If you’re going to be using disguise self a fair bit, you’ll likely want this quite high just to talk your way around various situations.

Options to avoid

Strength: I’d dump this on a shadowmaster. You should be focusing on dexterity and building for strength would mean investing a bit in dexterity for the AC anyway.
Wisdom: You should dump wisdom, you’ve got too many other ability scores to focus on.
Intelligence: The same goes for dumping intelligence.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	10
Dexterity	15	15
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	8	8
Wisdom	8	12
Charisma	15	14

Skills

Recommended options

Deception: Really important face skill if you intend to do a lot of deceiving.
Insight: Your wisdom likely won’t be great, but you will likely be the party face, in which case, a decent insight can be useful.
Intimidation: Another good face skills, especially for an evil leaning class.
Persuasion: Usually the most important face skill and another important one for a party face.
Stealth: Really important on a shadowmaster.

Options to avoid

Athletics: Ideally you’ll want to get acrobatics proficiency instead, perhaps through your background or race.
Arcana: Your lack of intelligence means there are likely to be better options for knowledge skills, especially as you’re better off focusing on face skills.
Investigation: similarly, you’ll lack the intelligence to be much good at this.
Religion: Same here, you lack the intelligence or the number of proficiencies to focus on religion.

Races

As a shadowmaster, you’ll likely want your race to help you with certain aspects of your build including:

Party face: You’ll likely be used as the party face, but you don’t have loads of skill proficiencies to throw at face skills. Your race can help here though.
Stealth specialist: On top of all these face skills, you’ll probably want to invest in stealth capabilities too, some of which aren’t naturally available to you (like sleight of hand, perception and acrobatics). Your race can help a bit here too.
Toughen up: Shadowmasters are a bit like rogues, but without the hit and run tactics. This means they’ll often find themselves in the midst of melee combat so any resilience will help them survive here.
Damage dealing: You also want to deal as much damage as possible meaning traits that can improve this will help.
Innate spellcasting: Most shadowmasters will have a decent charisma, making innate spellcasting a viable option. They aren’t the best for innate spellcasting as they can’t repeat cast spells, but can be decent at it.

Recommended options

Autognome: Improved AC without having to take bravado (so can grab a different combat mastery instead) is great on a dexterity build. Built for success means more reliable attacks or even saving throws and resistances and advantage on saving throws makes you more resilient.
Bugbear: Potentially more damage on the first round of combat, better reach for melee attacks and great at sneaking are all great on a shadowmaster, especially a dexterity build with high initiative.
Changeling: If you want to lean into the party face aspect of the class, then Changeling is a great option. Disguise self becomes obsolete here, but that just saves you a use of invoke Hell here and there. Grab a couple of face skill proficiencies and be able to change your appearance. Great for a sneaky spy subclass.
Dragonborn: Breath weapon gives you some crowd control and only costs one of your attacks. You also get a resistance and more depending on the type of Dragonborn you take.
Dwarves: The extra constitution and resistances are welcome to toughen you up. Hill Dwarf will get you more hit points, but you’ll have to take an extra wisdom which won’t be useful. Mountain will get you +2 strength which probably won’t be the best for you, and armor training is no good on an illrigger that already has those proficiencies so I’d go with Hill Dwarf.
Forest Gnome: Even more resilience for saving throws, the minor illusion cantrip and the ability speak with small beasts.
Goliath: Cold resistance and some reduced damage is handy for the extra resilience.
Hobgoblin: Help as a bonus action with extra bonuses works well for the illrigger which tends to be light on bonus action options unless you take certain interdict boons. Plus you can grab some resilience, damage or speed from this. A boost to failed d20 rolls is great for more resilience and damage too.
Human (variant): An extra skill proficiency and a feat are handy, especially as that skill can help you flesh out those face skills.
Orc: Bonus action dash and temporary hit points to close the gap in melee and for some extra resilience and survive being knocked to 0HP too.
Shifter: Grab intimidation proficiency, a bunch of temporary hit points and some bonus effects like an AC boost, a bonus action attack or improved wisdom saving throws.
Warforged: Warforged have a bunch of resilience features like improved AC, resistance to poison, advantage against the poisoned condition and more.

Backgrounds

Primarily, you want your background to pad out your skills and with a party face requiring quite a few face skills, you’ll likely want to enhance this through your background. Shadowmasters will want to top up their stealth skills too like stealth, sleight of hand, perception, acrobatics and Thieves’ tools.

I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a shadowmaster:

Name	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency	Languages
Courtier	Insight, persuasion	None	2 of your choice
Criminal	Deception, stealth	Thieves’ tools, one type of gaming set	None
Faceless	Deception, intimidation	Disguise kit	1 of your choice
Faction agent	Insight and 1 intelligence, wisdom or charisma skill	None	2 of your choice
Gambler	Deception insight	Gaming set	1 of your choice
Investigator	Two from insight, investigation and perception	Disguise kit, Thieves’ tools	None
Spy	Deception, stealth	One type of gaming set, Thieves’ tools	None
Urban bounty hunter	Choose 2 from deception, insight, persuasion and stealth	Choose 2 from one musical instrument, one gaming set and thieves’ tools	None
Urchin	Sleight of hand, stealth	Disguise kit, Thieves’ tools	None

Feats

From level 4 (or at level 1 if you’re playing a Human) you can grab a feat in place of an ability score increase. I’d suggest the following are some of your better options for a shadowmaster:

Fighting initiate: Grab a fighting style to complement your combat mastery.
Inspiring leader: Quite a lot of temporary hit points for the party every rest, especially if you’re a high charisma build.
Lucky: More reliable d20 tests.
Resilient: Some more resilience for another saving throw.
Sentinel: More opportunity attacks means you get the effects of terrorising force more often and with swift retribution, you can do this more often too.
Tough: More hit points means more resilience, great for a melee martial.

Weapons

Illriggers are capable of fighting with any type of weapon they want. Much of your choice will depend on the combat mastery you take. Brutal will mean using two handed weapons, inexorable means taking any kind of melee weapons and unfettered is good for ranged builds.

Dual-wielders can be a good option if you want more attacks, perhaps to maximise on terrorising force.

Having said all this, most shadowmasters will likely play a dexterity build. Because of this, you likely won’t be using two handed weapons and will be limited to finesse and ranged weapons.

Armor

You’ve probably gone for a dexterity build, so should go for studded leather and get your dexterity as high as possible. A shield is a solid option if you want to go for more defence over damage.

Alternatively, you can go for an unarmored built, but that will require considerable investment. You’ll need to take the bravado combat mastery and get your dexterity and charisma as high as possible (20 if you can). This gives you a 22AC potential with a shield though, or more with magic items so it can be the superior option.

Technically, medium armor is an option too, but this subpar on a dexterity build, that relies on stealth